Hate to harp on this, but I count 38 double concertos on this list alone that are after Brahms. What the hell is Horner talking about? For a guy who spends a lot of time digging around in classical music scores, you might think he'd be more aware. I mean Schnittke, Glass, O'Connor and a bunch of other people have written important Double Concertos for Violin/Cello-never mind all the other types of Double Concertos:

What's next, he writes a symphony and says no one has written one since Beethoven's Ninth?

yes. I was intrigued by the news there are concert works of him coming.

I still don't know how to make reason out of the ambiguity that he did compose beautiful original music and Is stealing shameslessly brillant ideas so obviously (and not only his own previous ideas).

What puzzles is that he claims he is not aware of the similarities (which often are more like quotes), so has he some kind of brain incapacity to indentify music, like people who can't recognize faces again because they all look the same?

I don't want to bash him, I like a lot of the music he wrote, just want to understand. He talks of the limited possibilities for melodies and rhythm, and the possible combinations are all done already. So maybe that makes it ok to not even try an just repeat what has been created, and call that personal style? He admits Britten's War Requiem is one of his favorite work and he did not notice he himself used the Hosanna of it in Troy almost note by note? So is he failing to notice the same music, unable to compare, or is he pretending?

Also the thing with the double concertos since Brahms, WTF? How can he claim that when he is obviously not the slightest idea of what happened in the classical world.

I don't know, artistically, his integrity is... well... how can you make sense of this kind of behaviour?

EDIT: Maybe he should stop giving interviews, or should hire someone to coach him what to say, so it is not even worse than the mere music-liftings

About 34 years ago, a teenage boy named ME went into a HMV record shop about 5 blocks from where I was last night and bought an LP titled BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, which I played time and again, enjoying the riffs on Star Trek TMP and Magnificent 7 while also falling for the unique sound and voice displayed in the other, more original tracks. I don't think a year has passed since that time wherein I haven't bought and listened to a new James Horner score. Some I've loved, some not so much and some I've felt I'd heard before but all have brought some fun and joy into my life. Hearing his newest work, LIVE in my home town last night felt like a kind of culmination of my appreciation of James Horner and his music over the years. I'm pleased to report his classical music sound is VERY much like his film music voice, so, unlike the John Williams and Ennio Morricone works that veer away from the emotion and melody of their film scores, hearing it evokes memories of the music that has thrilled and captivated me over the years, akin to the Lee Holdridge, Michael Kamen and Elmer Bernstein classical stuff I've heard. Wisps of LAND BEFORE TIME and BOBBY FISCHER floated in and above a more slower, languid base of IRIS, before ending with a thrilling STAR TREK 2/KRULL finish. The best thing I can say about it is, the second it finished, I wanted to hear it again. If Horner slows down the film scores, as seems to be the case, at least I can now look forward to his classical works which may be in the same vein. I'd also really really love to hear SPECTRAL SHIMMERS now.

I went away from Horner for a long time. The borrowing became too much. But then I came back to him and basically focused on all the good original stuff he has done. I also cut him some slack because, as a classical person, the world of concert music in the 20th century was so abusive, snobby, unaccepting, cut-throat, that it pushed a lot of gifted people away.

I'm glad that he's coming back. I think he's coming back because we have been moving away from the orchestra in film music for a decade. Big synthesized scores are the sound of the moment, and the expensive traditional orchestra is taking a back seat. I hope it makes a comeback but symphonic composers like Horner have less opportunities. Goldenthal just wrote his first symphony at age 60.

The good news is that the concert audience and classical world in general is over all that fighting about tonality versus atonality. None of that matters anymore. Film composers can try there hand at writing a concert work here or there as have James Newton Howard, Shore, Davis, etc.